ABSTRACT
The events narrated by Pemalingpa in the first person cover the years from his birth in 1450 down to 1519, three years before his death in 1521. Thereafter the story is taken up in the third person by Gyalwa Döndrup and continued till Pemalingpa's final funeral ceremonies, which were held ten months after his death in the first month of 1521. The whole circumstances are fortunately revealed in the colophon composed by Gyalwa Döndrup.8 He records a conversation which took place between Pemalingpa and himself at Tsampa on the twenty-fifth of the eleventh month in the year of the Dragon (1520). H e begged Pemalingpa to bring his autobiography up to date by relating the events which had not so far been recorded. Pemalingpa explained that he had himself set down in writing everything that had occurred down to the time when he had been infuriated by a hen that had been interfering with the offerings arranged for a ritual performed for one of his devotees. Pemalingpa had thrown a stone pestle at it. The imprint of his hand had appeared on the stone, and the description of the event is duly found in a passage dealing with the year 1482 when Pemalingpa was thirty-two years old.9 Thereafter, he says, there had been no time to think carefully about what had followed, but in response to the repeated demands of the lama Tashi Gyalpo he had recounted his memories and that lama had written these down "exactly as recounted by the lord in person without minimizing or exaggerating". There is no reason to doubt this, because the style and structure of the section actually written by Pemalingpa in his own hand for the years 1450-82 are identical to those for the years 1483-1518 which he dictated to Tashi Gyalpo. By contrast the break between the dictated account and the concluding section for the years 1518-21 composed by Gyalwa Döndrup is abrupt and immediately noticeable.10
